Participants will receive lessons on major instruments, jurisprudence, challenges, strategies and opportunities relevant to strategic litigation on the rights of women in the country. They will equally be exposed to the procedures to litigate before regional human rights mechanisms (notably, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, and the ECOWAS Community Court of Justice), as well as the techniques of framing arguments and remedies. This will culminate in a case-identification and case-planning exercise.

Other activities to go alongside this training include the collection of resources (case law and legislation) pertaining to sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) in Mali, which will enable IHRDA to include Mali’s profile on its online SGBV database (http://sgbv.ihrda.org/). Also, IHRDA and APDF will organize a series of radio sensitization and advocacy programs on pertinent women’s rights issues in Mali.

This project is funded by Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA).